Dream in Disguise

Dream is an inevitable part of the human’s daily routine. It has no rules of chronology and sometimes is very obnoxious. Freud says that the dream is composed of what we see or come across in our day to day life, may it be the people we interact with or the places we visit. 

What you think is what you become, but does it apply for our dreams too? Have we ever come across people saying that what you Dream is what you become. If that is the case then I would have been a Dragon Ball Z warrior when I was 13, and this would have been often changed during various time period of my life. I believe that dreams are the influencers which help you achieve your deepest desire, in my childhood days to become the cartoon superhero that I adored was my desire and dream. But as we grow up and reach the adolescence age, we have a clear image of what we want to become in our life. Though the path that we take may digress in between, we still reach it.

 A dream is capable of influencing people to a greater extent; it is said that the things lying dormant in our subconscious mind is getting active in our dreams. Let’s consider the example of a football player in our country; his ultimate aim is to play in the English Premier League. He works every day for his progress and in his subconscious mind he creates an image of himself wearing the jersey of the club that he wishes to play. This thought is tapped during his dream and it recreates the entire scene, but now he is actually playing the game in the Club amongst the thousands of fans who chants his name. After waking up though there is a small disappointment, he realizes the joy and proud moments felt in the dream. Thus he goes out to the field and practices so hard that he converts that bogus moment to a truth.

Dream has disguised and has never revealed itself to us, but was always there running behind influencing us in all possible ways. As Abdul kalam said “Dream is not what you see in sleep, but is the thing that doesn’t allow you to sleep. So stop thinking and start Dreaming.

John Richard

john.richard@northpointindia.com

PGP MR 2015-16

Northpoint Centre of Learning

 

The Silent Cry

“I wanted to become free, I wanted to become clean, I wanted to become safe, I wanted to become lovable.” – Crystal, CSA Survivor

Only a few crimes could be darker and more horrifying than child sexual abuse (CSA). For most victims, the trauma tends to stretch throughout their lives, disguising itself in various fear-based mechanisms. Disturbing memories and associations with the abuse can be triggered by the most mundane things, latent in even the most gentle, innocent touch.

“As a survivor, one of the big frustrating things for me is the thought that we should just get over it, let it go, forgive and forget, and move on with our lives. That would be awesome, but it just doesn’t happen that way.” – I.T. O’Shaughnessy, CSA Survivor

   More often than not, victims have no conscious memory of them being abused. The mind’s defense system kicks in and suppresses the terrifying memories. However, this doesn’t solve the problem.  The suffocated traumatic memories, experiences and associations with it all, keep trying to come up to the surface – they need to breathe.  They don’t reveal themselves like ordinary memories, but in bits and pieces so the individual is left trying to comprehend them, failing to make all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place.

“Logic becomes a loud voice when the wall of our past abuse begins to crack with awareness. But that's our adult speaking. The child within, who had the experience, talks to us through flashes of insights. Trust your perceptions. They are a powerful guide in healing.” 
― Jeanne McElvaney, Advocate for survivors of CSA

  The abuser is generally a close relative or family friend who is perceived to be good with children – always keenly entertaining them with toys or just someone who wants to always be around innocent toddlers. There is enough awareness about how these abusers form strong relationships based on trust with their child-victims, before starting off with their terrifying ‘games’ of sexual abuse. They then threaten the child, manipulating him to keep quiet and not speak up about the abuse.

It is important to understand why a child keeps quiet, and why he continues to be afraid of speaking up even when he becomes an adult. It is because many children have been conned into feeling like they liked it, they wanted it and that they asked for it – especially since the abuser typically says that it’s a ‘game’ just between himself and the child, meant to be a special secret. The abusers play with guilt and shame – and are successful most of the time.

Having become an adult, he now thinks that nobody would believe him even if he dared to speak up. Most of the time, the abuser is a very close well-wisher or relative, and it’s hard to imagine that one would be taken seriously.

Thus it is imperative to lift the veil of taboo over CSA. The more awareness we generate around this, the better. It helps victims and survivors feel like their suffering is recognized; that their pain is heard and seen; that they have a system to support them; that they can use their voice and break their silence - so that they can courageously share their truth with the world for other survivors to know they aren’t alone.

“The very first part in healing is shattering the silence,” 

― Erin Merryn, CSA Survivor

Pallavi Dhote

pallavi.dhote@northpointindia.com

 PGP MarComm 2015-16  

The End of the Rainbow

She opened her eyes to the beautiful world,

Greeted the nature with a smile unfurled.

 

No end to dreams,

No end to laughter,

 

All she ever wanted was a pulse of love ever after.

Gaze of hope and hands to cope,

Kept her going along the rope, when the world secretly eloped.

 

Humming the song of life,

She moved ahead unattached with no demise.

 

Met a chum on her way to the crumb,

 Among all the dearest was the thumb.

 

Now she thought was the time to rely,

But yet again time refused to defy.

 

What she thought was a ladder to glee,

Turned to be a barren tree.

 

Dreams remained furled,

Eyes remained curled…

The urge was never ending

So the smile decided to fake the pending.

 

Anchal Shah

anchal.shah@northpointindia.com

PGP - MarComm 2015-16

 

 

 

Cupiditas

 

Life truly is a wonderful gift to have. Though the sheen of it seems to have been considerably soiled by the problems we are creating and the problems we divulge. We live today in the shadows of violence, our own insecurities and severe competitive environment. And what has caused such extreme degeneration of the pure joy of living? Is it greed?

 

  I tend to agree. Our daily lives are driven by the ambition to accumulate. For instance, we hoard titles of wealth to earn a position in society, while trying hard to avoid the pitfalls of failure. What has made life so deceitful? It is greed which we masquerade as ambition - which is a fine quality to have. However I have to say, greed is the reason that has soiled the joy of living, and what is life without joy? A famous author once said that greed is “A selfish or excessive desire more than needed or deserved.”

Greed doesn’t just poison us on an individual level. The world wars of the last century, the great economic depression, cold war and several calamities have been fuelled by this destructive desire. Be it greed for power or greed for wealth. And today sadly our greed for comfort has led to a catastrophic disaster which is not only affecting our fellow men but the entire planet.

The world as of today is more educated than it was but still has never acted more foolishly. Greed is the fuel which is powering our own destruction and unfortunately it never runs out. Now is the time we seize the initiative, be realistic, reflect on things as they are and probably even take corrective actions. Let’s empty our cans of greed and stop the vehicle of personal and global destruction. For life is to live and to live is to be happy.

Anisha Lalwani

MR 2015-16

anisha.lalwani@northpointindia.com

Northpoint Centre of Learning

 

The People Who 'Cry Wolf'

  Social responsibility, practical joke, social experiment whatever you may call it, you see these videos popping up on the internet about rape, women empowerment, social response to a crime and wonder if there actually exists more crimes than fake viral videos of it. Now we're all for educating the world about empathy and creating an ideal world where people act as parts of a well-oiled machine called 'the society' over the new and exciting medium, we remain skeptical as to thinking whether 'crying wolf' is the best way to go about a social revolution that the world is desperately crying out for.

    While there are several reasons for us to strongly condemn this supposedly genuine act of social responsibility, we’re not planning on elaborating the obvious just to prove a point. From a more logical point of view let’s start off by admitting that these poor attempts at social reforms are in all respects for entertainment purposes and plays absolutely no part in changing the way people live, think or act. From a standalone perspective of the matter it cannot be considered to be acts of social responsibility since it is purely commercial at heart, cause if these videos or social media posts actually did share something common with it, poverty stricken Somalian children would be billionaire driving their Mercedes and enjoying the high life based on the attention it commands over the new medium.

The viral nature of such videos increases the likelihood of an actual person who may come across an incident such as rape viewing the same, furthermore, be influenced by it when faced with an actual scenario, not necessarily in a good way, since this to them is nothing more than a prank by bored adolescents trying desperately to create a viral video that nobody wants to be a part of. 

The fight or flight response triggered by the human brain when faced with an unfamiliar social situation is purely instinctual and situational. Our point being that by creating a fake scenario in a video all they accomplish is showing how an average brain would function under the prevalent stress of the simulated situation, which isn’t necessarily the ideal solution to the problem we are facing right now. Aside from the fact that it is only done for pointing fingers at people who might not function well under stress. Let’s not forget the all too familiar social and judicial repercussion an individual is faced with on a genuinely heroic attempt to fight the ‘social malice’. We’ve seen it, read about it and at least some of us have questioned the integrity of a person who tried to help out a girl being invaded or a wounded guy by the sidewalk. Could we be blamed for thinking so? With the world being so twisted as it is who could be trusted?

Basic human behaviour is the social infection here and that is something that exists within the system. Our efforts to cure this infection is compromised by the fact that we ourselves are working within the system. Adding commercialism to the mix doesn’t help the cause either. For those of you who are supposedly helping the cause by capitalizing on it, we suggest you help by not helping such that the true heroes of our society are open to do their jobs without being tainted by influence of this unfiltered medium soiled by human thoughts, selfishness and whims. It might be the innocence of a kid who is unable to fathom the seriousness of a dangerous situation or a helpless old man crying out for aid for a fellow being being wronged that could save the day.

With hopes that the hero that exist within each one of us could rise up to the challenges set by the society and the mechanical mob behavior, we leave you with nothing more than information and influential thought, not videos.

Jugal Joseph

PGP Marcomm -2015-16

jugal.joseph@northpointindia.com

Northpoint Centre of Learning

Godmen

Juxtaposing the perspectives of Indians towards Godmen surely succeeds in baffling a “non-Indian”. But for a bhartiya, it’s a dilemma which has become a part and parcel of our everyday life. Every era has had its own quota of numerous godmen either claiming of being a reincarnation of God himself or just a guru who enlightens us with a path to our salvation.

Even though the names of these so called godmen have changed with the changing time, the image or the feel attached with them remains constant. One always expects them to be detached from all the worldly pleasures: someone who has already attained nirvana.

In a flourishing community which is highly skewed towards men, seldom do we find a “Godwomen” who enjoys such a bizarre list of followers. This doesn’t mean that I am claiming their existence to be a question mark but rather I am simply throwing light on their low acceptance level by the guru-seekers. Still going against the odds, many a times these women have succeeded in attracting massive chunks of our population and transformed them into their devotees.

But is that it? Are these saints only there to help us in attaining “moksh”? I have always grappled with accepting that there is no other side to their intentions. A part of my growing up was reading about the various heinous crimes committed by them thereby conjuring in me a sense of hatred towards them.

Then what is it that pulls millions of “bhakts” towards these men? Is it their charismatic persona which Hitler is believed to have possessed too or are they actually sent by the almighty himself? This is where rational individuals like me would exasperate in astonishment and throw colossal number of examples exposing godmens who were simply cheats.

Coming from a school of thought who believes that one doesn’t need an intermediary to be one with the creator or himself, I find this whole idea of their existence ridiculous. But then again this is just seeing the world from my lenses and hence would give it an incomplete ending. Brooding on the psyche of the followers who serve their entire lives for these spiritual leaders makes me keen on knowing them personally. What is it that makes them blindly follow them? Is it something which is too abstract for me to comprehend or is it simply an illusion trap in which millions of us Indians fall daily!

Sophia Jose

sophia.jose@northpointindia.com

PGP MR 2015-16

Northpoint Centre of Learning